SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – The thing about Wyndham Clark is he’s a streaky golfer.

When he’s right, he’s as good as anybody. You remember, right? He won the 2023 U.S. Open. Earlier this year, he shot a 60 to win a shortened event at Pebble Beach. He was second at Bay Hill, tied for second at The Players.

Clark has demonstrated why he deserved to be one of only four Americans who qualified for these Paris Olympics.

He just hasn’t shown it lately.

And that includes Thursday’s Olympics first round at Le Golf National. While most of the 60-player field took advantage of ideal scoring conditions on Day 1, Clark opened with a 4-over 75. His first three holes: bogey, double bogey, bogey. Though he stabilized from there, he closed with another double on No. 15.

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That does no favors for the current Olympic qualifying system, which is based on world rankings and has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks and months, largely because it snubbed reigning U.S. open champ Bryson DeChambeau and sent a struggling Clark to Paris instead.

This keeps coming up because the U.S. team is the most difficult to make of any golfing country at the Olympics. That’s because only a maximum of four players can make it. Whereas Americans comprise the majority of a typical PGA Tour field, it’s 6.67% here.

“We get four guys because we’re all top 15 in the world,” Scottie Scheffler said, “and it’s still by far the hardest team to make. If we could bring all of our best players, the field for this tournament would look a lot different, and I’m sure we’d have a better chance of taking home some more medals. But we only get four guys. It’s hard to choose the best four.”

As the qualifying process continues to get attention and debate, the most likely it’ll get reevaluated before the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Spain’s Jon Rahm said this week that he’d prefer each country selects its team, like in basketball.

Scheffler said he prefers the current system because it’s subjective.

“We had some tournaments in amateur golf where the whole team was chosen at times,” Scheffler said. “I’m a fan of having a standard system where you know where you stand in terms of getting in – like it is now.”

It’s not Clark’s fault that DeChambeau (who finished No. 10 in the Olympics rankings) went to LIV, knowing that the decision could cost him dearly in the rankings. Never mind the fact, too, that Clark wouldn’t have been excluded even if DeChambeau had squeaked in this summer. Clark (No. 5) qualified ahead of USA teammate Collin Morikawa (No. 7).

Clark nonetheless becomes a lighting rod for criticism of the Olympic qualifying system because of how he’s playing.

He missed cuts in three of four majors and finished tied for No. 56 at the U.S. Open. He went through a stretch this season where he missed cuts in three of five tournaments. (Of course in the middle of that, he tied for third in Hilton Head, but that’s just Clark).

After Thursday’s round, Clark moved quickly through the media area, not stopping to field questions about his round. On Wednesday, however, he went into detail with reporters at Le Golf National about his struggles this year, saying he has been dealing with an injury since The Masters that has cost him club speed and length on his drives.

“You start going down rabbit holes that maybe I shouldn’t have gone down,” Clark said, “and next thing you know, I’m missing cuts by a little bit and not playing at the level that I was earlier in the year or some parts of last year. … I fully believe in my game when I’m playing good, and I believe I can beat anyone when I feel good.”

That happens in golf. You get a nagging injury. Your game gets off track. You start pressing to get it back and it takes you farther off course into the wilderness.

But you know what doesn’t usually happen in golf? This week. The Olympics is special. It felt different Thursday on the course, and a bunch of players said that afterward. This means more. It is for a country, not just for an individual.

And if an athlete isn’t fully healthy and uncomfortable with his or her game, does he or she give that country the best opportunity to win an Olympic medal? Didn’t seem like it Thursday.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

In fact, Biles has been so good for so long that some gymnastics fans may even take her amazing skills for granted.

But here’s one fun fact that about Biles that almost defies logic: Despite being just 4 feet, 8 inches tall, the eight-time Olympic gold medalist can get as high as 12 feet off the ground during her floor routine. Yes, you read that right.

How high can Simone Biles jump?

At the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, the top of Biles’ head got as high as 12 feet above the surface on one of the jumps during her floor exercise routine, NBC Sports calculated.

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How did she do it?

First of all, her tumbling run builds up a tremendous amount of momentum and kinetic energy, which she releases when she pushes off with her powerful leg muscles. In addition, competitive gymnastics floors have springs beneath them, which makes the surface safer for athletes for landing while giving them added inches on tumbles.

Put all these factors together with the laws of physics, and you have Simone Biles soaring through the air at a height that would clear even 7-foot, 4-inch Frenchman Victor Wembanyama, the tallest player in the NBA (and at these Olympic Games).

Simone Biles’ Olympic medal count

With the USA’s victory in the women’s team competition in Paris, Simone Biles now has five Olympic gold medals and eight Olympic medals, total – more than any other American gymnast in history.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Biles won three individual golds in the all-around, vault and floor exercise and led the U.S. to the team gold. She also added a bronze medal on the balance beam. 

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Biles added a silver medal in the team event and an additional bronze medal in the balance beam.

Just like Simone Biles flying through the air on vault, NBC’s viewership numbers for the women’s gymnastics team final at the Paris Olympics were through the roof.

NBC’s live daytime broadcast of the women’s gymnastics team final averaged 12.7 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, marking the event as one of the network’s top weekday daytime events in Olympic history.

This meant that more people tuned in live to watch Team USA’s gold-medal-winning performance than for any single game of the 2024 NBA Finals or the first round of the 2024 NFL draft. 

The live broadcast aired from 12:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday. NBC reported a total audience of 34.7 million throughout the day, which included later replays of the team gymnastics final during primetime.

Viewership of the Paris Olympics has so far surged past Tokyo, with NBC’s five-day total audience average up 79% from the 2021 Games. Paris, which is six hours ahead of the East Coast, offers a more convenient time zone for an American audience than Tokyo, which is 13 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone. 

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Carlos Ortiz is in contention for what could be the biggest win of his professional career at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The Mexican golfer has found himself in striking distance of a medal after Round 1 of men’s individual stroke play, which began on Thursday at Le Golf National in Guyancourt, France. The LIV professional golfer is tied for 14th in the 60-player after shooting 3-under-par 68 in Thursday’s opening round.

This is Ortiz’s second trip to the Summer Olympics after competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for Team Mexico, where he finished 42nd overall.

Here’s everything to know about Ortiz as he competes in golf at the 2024 Paris Olympics:

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Who is Carlos Ortiz?

Ortiz is a professional golfer who is currently playing on the LIV Golf Tour after leaving the PGA Tour in 2022. He is currently a member of the Torque GC team on the LIV Golf Tour, which also includes Joaquin Niemann, Sebastián Muñoz and Mito Pereira.

In his three years with LIV, Ortiz has only won one event, which came in June at the LIV Golf Houston. He turned pro on the PGA Tour in 2013 after playing collegiately at the University of North Texas. During his time on the PGA Tour, Ortiz picked up just one win, which came at the 2020 Vivint Houston Open.

The 2024 Paris Olympics are the second Olympic Games for Ortiz, who is one of two members representing Mexico in golf (the other being Abraham Ancer).

Carlos Ortiz age

Ortiz is 33 years old. He is a native of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Has Carlos Ortiz competed in the Olympics before?

Yes. Ortiz competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a member of Mexico.

In the Tokyo Games, Ortiz finished 42nd in the men’s individual stroke play with a final score of 5 under par. Here’s a breakdown of his round-by-round performance in Tokyo, per ESPN:

Score with par in parentheses per round

Round 1: 65 (-6)
Round 2: 67 (-4)
Round 3: 69 (-2)
Round 4: 78 (+7)
Total score: 279 (-5)

Carlos Ortiz world ranking

Ortiz is currently ranked No. 272 on the Official World Golf Rankings.

What did Carlos Ortiz shoot at the Olympics on Thursday?

Ortiz shot 3 under in Round 1 at the Paris Games. The Mexican golfer bogeyed on Hole 18 to fall to 3-under-par 68 for the round, good for tied-for-14th. He carded six birdies on the day, but had two bogeys and a double bogey on the back nine to drop him down the leaderboard.

When does Carlos Ortiz tee off in Round 2 of Olympic golf?

Ortiz is set to tee off at 4:22 a.m. ET on Friday in Round 2 of Olympic golf competition at Le Golf National in Guyancourt, France. He will once again be paired with Shubhankar Sharma (India) and Rafael Campos (Puerto Rico).

PARIS – The queen of Roland Garros was dethroned Thursday in the Olympic semifinals – by a different kind of queen.

Qinwen Zheng – or QUEEN-wen, as she enjoys being called around the WTA Tour – took out No. 1 Iga Swiatek, 6-2, 7-5, in a stunner that will give China a chance to win its first gold medal in tennis on Saturday.

Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion at this venue, hadn’t lost a match at Roland Garros since the 2021 quarterfinals. She came into the Olympics as a massive favorite, but perhaps felt a different kind of pressure trying to win gold for Poland, her home country. 

Instead, she’ll have to settle at best for the bronze medal after a perplexing performance where her normally reliable baseline game produced a barrage of unforced errors.

After Zheng dominated the first set, Swiatek took a long bathroom break just as she did Wednesday after losing the second to American Danielle Collins. And just as she did the day before, Swiatek came out refocused and quickly shot out to a 4-0 lead. 

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But Zheng, the No. 6 seed who broke out earlier this year by making the Australian Open final, did not give up on the set and manged to retrieve the two breaks to level things at 5-5. Swiatek then lost her serve with more uncharacteristic errors from the baseline, allowing Zheng an opportunity to close out the match.

After Zheng staved off a break point with a deft – and gutsy – drop shot, Swiatek sailed a routine backhand long for her 36th unforced error and then missed a return on match point as Zheng fell to the ground in celebration.

Zheng will play either Donna Vekic of Croatia or Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia for the gold medal. 

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Part of the fun of golfing at the Olympics is the chance to watch other athletes. Rory McIlroy went to tennis on Wednesday and other golfers have gone to various events at the Paris Games.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler was at Tuesday night’s gymnastics team final with his wife and baby, watching the USA women capture gold.

“I was amazed at their poise,” Scheffler said Thursday after shooting a 4-under 67 in the opening round of the Olympic tournament at Le Golf National. “They compete for years and years and years. … For one tournament to have such an emphasis every four years is really challenging.

“If I had a bad week this week, I could take a week off and I’d still have another great chance to kind of prove it to myself that I could do it under the biggest lights.”

Gymnast Suni Lee made the biggest impression on Scheffler, because while warming up on the uneven bars “she face-planted on the mat coming off the top bar.”

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“It’s like a shank (in golf) except somebody also like simultaneously punched you in the face at the same time. I don’t really know how to equate it to golf. … First of all, it’s really going to hurt, and it’s going to throw you off. Five minutes later, she’s got to go up there and do her routine in front of the entire world and really be judged for a long time on that one specific routine.”

“And then,” Scheffler added, “flawless. It was awesome.”

Scheffler was asked Thursday if he looked at other U.S. Olympic legends like Simone Biles or Katie Ledecky and thought of himself – as the world’s No. 1 golfer – in a similar fashion.

“Not really,” Scheffler said.

“To compare golf to (Ledecky) is fairly challenging. I think she has like the 20 best times in the 1500. That would be like me shooting the lowest 20 scores on tour … So (it is) me shooting 57 20 times. I’m probably going to have to practice a little harder.”

PARIS – Algeria’s Imane Khelif, one of two female Olympic boxers disqualified from the 2023 world championships after failing gender eligibility tests, entered the ring Thursday at the Paris Games.

Her bout ended in abrupt and bizarre fashion.

Khelif prevailed when Italy’s Angela Carini stopped fighting after 46 seconds.

Carini was punched in the nose and shortly afterward said she didn’t want to fight anymore, according to Italian coach Emanuele Renzini

‘After one punch she feel big pain,” Renzini told reporters,.

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Carini wept when speaking with reporters after the fight and spoke only in Italian. Translation of her comments was not immediately available.

But Renzini said Carini had been told not to take the fight and it had been weighing on her as the bout approached.

During the first round, Carini consulted with her coach twice before the fight was halted. Officially, Khelif won by ABD (abandoned).

The crowd at North Paris Arena greeted Khelif with cheers before the abbreviated fight at the Summer Olympics and several Algeria flags were seen among the crowd. The fight in the welterweight division at 66 kg (146 pounds) was scheduled for three three-minute rounds.

The issue of gender eligibility criteria surfaced at the 2023 world championships when Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan both won medals in the women’s competition before tournament officials announced the boxers had failed gender eligibility tests. They were stripped of their medals.

This week the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the two boxers met criteria to compete in Paris, sparking discussion about gender eligibility tests.

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The world championships are overseen by the International Boxing Association (IBA), long plagued with scandal and controversy.

Last year the IOC banished the IBA and developed an ad-hoc unit that ran the Olympic boxing tournament at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and is doing the same here.

The IOC did not detail the criteria met by Khelif and Yu-Ting to compete here and in Tokyo, but did say the boxers’ passports state they are women.

Yu-Ting, 28, is scheduled to begin competition Friday against Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the featherweight division at 57 kg (126 pounds).

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Jake Paul, an honorary coach of the U.S. Olympic boxing team, sounded off on Thursday.

Paul, the social media influencer and pro boxer, joined a chorus of objectors following an Olympic women’s boxing match that included an Algerian fighter whose gender eligibility has come under question.

The Algerian, Imane Khelif, won her opening bout Thursday after landing a single punch – on the nose of Italy’s Angela Carini.

Soon after, Carini quit − 46 seconds into the bout. She wept in the ring and during interviews with reporters.

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“This is sickening,’’ Paul wrote on his verified X account. ‘This is a travesty. Doesn’t matter what you believe. This is wrong and dangerous.’’

The issue of gender eligibility criteria surfaced at the 2023 world championships when Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan both won medals in the women’s competition before tournament officials announced the boxers had failed gender eligibility tests. They were stripped of their medals.

This week the IOC this week has said Khelif and Yu-Ting have met eligibility criteria to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But the IOC has not explained what the criteria is other than to say the national passports of both women “state’’ they are women.

Paul, who spent time with the U.S. boxing team at its headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., as the fighters were preparing for the Games, Is expected to arrive here in time for the medal bouts.

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Miles Partain and Andy Benesh have certainly made their trip to the 2024 Paris Olympics a memorable one.

The top United States men’s beach volleyball pairing made their Olympic debut last week, won their first Olympic match on Monday — despite a late controversy — and then chose to initiate the sort of change rarely seen on an international stage like the one provided by the Paris Games. 

Partain and Benesh, according to NBC, parted ways with their coach, Mike Placek, ahead of a pivotal Pool D win on Thursday over George Wanderley and Andre Loyola of Brazil (21-17, 14-21, 15-8).

“There was a team meeting and a team decision to not move forward with their coach,” NBC beach volleyball broadcaster Dain Blanton reported during the opening set of the match. “What that means is possibly (assistant coach) Paul Lotman will move into that coaching spot. We do not want to speculate on the details. We will get those answers after the match from the players themselves.”

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Kevin Wong, who has been a commentator on NBC’s Olympic beach volleyball coverage since the 2012 London Olympics, remarked that “in all the years we’ve been covering the Olympic beach volleyball event, I don’t know if there’s every been a coaching change within the competition itself. That’d be a first.”

No further details were provided about the coaching change.

“We’re just focused on our next matches,” Benesh said when asked about it after the match, according to Volleyballmag.com.

Placek is a former college tennis player who later transitioned to professional volleyball, including appearances on the AVP and with USA Volleyball. Lotman was a member of the U.S. men’s Olympic volleyball team (indoor) during the 2012 London Olympics.

Partain and Benesh lost their opening match of the 2024 Paris Olympics to the Cuban team of Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz. But they bounced back to beat the Moroccan team of Mohamed Abicha and Zouheir El Graoui in a match that featured sand temperature exceeding 110 degrees at Eiffel Tower Stadium and a controversial challenge that went Morocco’s way to extend the second set.

The victory Thursday over Brazil guarantees a spot in the Round of 16 for Partain and Benesh, who are the youngest U.S. Olympic beach volleyball team in history. Partain is 22 years old and still attends UCLA. Benesh, 29, is a former USC volleyball player.

The United States is looking for its first medal in men’s beach volleyball since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Partain and Benesh are considered its best shot. The Southern California natives finished fifth at last year’s world championships.

“We found our mojo again,” Benesh told reporters following this latest win. “It’ll be back for eternity. We’re super happy with the style we played with today and we’re going to continue that.”